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      Buro Happold

      Engaged Employer

      Buro Happold reviews

      4.0

      77% would recommend to a friend

      (692 total reviews)
      avatar

      Oliver Plunkett

      97% approve of CEO

      67% positive business outlook

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Buro Happold has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 692 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Buro Happold employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      692 reviews
      1.0
      May 22, 2017

      Sinking ship, revolving door, awful pay, poor training, dull work, uninspiring

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      The 5 unpaid holidays are useful. Relaxed atmosphere. People are mostly great. Cliquey. Great engineers, very helpful. Flexibility on hours is good. Good with sick leave. Remote working possible as everyone has laptops. Leave at 3pm last Friday of every month (if you don't have deadlines). Good holiday balance overall but graduates should receive the full 25 days rather than 22.

      Cons

      A company that could be way better than it is if only it remunerated staff competitively and created incentive. The talent of this workforce is severely undervalued and there has been a huge exodus with staff constantly leaving. The only people that stay are those not interested in money or who have served in industry for decades. Wage rises are below inflation, bonuses are never paid to anyone below associate grade unless you've completed several weeks worth (yes, weeks) of unpaid overtime to prove that you are "dedicated". To graduates thinking of joining: The new start induction is so poor and sets the tone for the remainder of your time here. Glorified CAD dummy with no real technical work. Tweaking drawings without fundamental understanding being given prior to undertaking a task just to get deliverables out the door. Don't take this job for the money, there are good opportunities to learn on "prestigious" projects (they are local education sectors slavedrivers) for a year or two on your CV and then leave. The lack of any sort of reward for effective work creates an atmosphere of mediocrity and stagnation where nobody is praised or more importantly, punished for mistakes which trickle downstream and affect everyone else in the form of project budgets and workload. A lot of internal office politics, embarrassing levels of delusion when talking about being "connected" to the wider company/regions. Office leads *think* they're in touch with the other staff when they speak on their half but don't have a clue and don't want to listen to anything perceivable negative one might have to say in order to facilitate an improvement. Nor are any suggestions to improve current systems taken on board. They continually try to channel Ted Happold but I'm pretty sure Ted Happold would have addressed the fact 57% of staff thought they were not paid fairly (staff survey) rather than brushing it over in a feedback video. The lack of any base level of corporate or formal structure means that project management is overwhelmed (because there is none). There are no procedures, routines or rules which means technical information has no standard format and this causes so many issues on projects. Having addressed all of this throughout my time to no avail, it's no wonder I left. If you have ambition, stay away from this company.

      avatar
      Buro Happold Response
      9y
      Hello Thanks for your observations and commentary below. In response, I’d like to provide some clarity around your comments. Firstly, thank you for you noting flexibility on hours. We do strive to offer flexible working conditions to reflect modern day working and are committed to investing in our employees and their families or other commitments outside to work. We do find some of your comments concerning and we will investigate your contrary comments further. I would like to address a couple of your comments below to clarify a few details. Connectivity We have introduced a number of measures to try and improve connectivity between our global offices. These include a new Intranet, Yammer (our internal social media network), e-News and our CEO global calls. The purpose of the latter is to bring together colleagues worldwide and share updates and changes. We were pleased that a high proportion of BuroHappold feel we are connected as a global company – with an above industry average percentage. Staff Survey (Employee Engagement Survey) It was disappointing to see you shared false data from our staff survey and feel this is a misrepresentation of the data that was shared in confidence internally to all employees. We can proudly say, as a business, our feedback figures on pay were well above the industry average. Salary & reward We have a reward team who ensure all salaries are competitive within the appropriate market taking. They analyse a number of factors including market testing and benchmarking. Grad program Our emerging professionals programme is designed to support graduates and help them reach their full potential. We strive to empower our graduates and challenge them through working on a variety of projects to give them a broad exposure to different sectors. We wish you the very best for the future. The BuroHappold Team
      3.0
      May 9, 2017

      Nice bunch of people but lack of progression

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      People are young and fun and a real family feel in the company. Lots of social events to attend to

      Cons

      - There is little chance of progression if you're not an engineer - Salary is low and a payrise is pretty difficult to get because partners keep offering favours to their friends which means we don't make much money on projects - Late nights and weekend work mean you don't tend to get much of a life outside of work - Building is falling apart and toilets are always blocked -Turnover is unreal! People are leaving literally everyday

      avatar
      Buro Happold Response
      9y
      Hello Thank you for your feedback. Great to hear that you've participated in some of the social activities and feel a sense of belonging. We do take your comments on-board and are concerned if you are working overtime. We do want our employees to achieve a good work-life balance to support their health and well-being and have recently introduced new tools to support our project planning. We hope this will improve how we share and manage our workloads. We also do recognise that our people are the key to our success and are always looking for new initiatives to empower our employees and offer them the recognition they deserve. The BuroHappold Team
      3.0
      May 5, 2017

      Review

      Associate structural engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      They have a good selection of work and talent

      Cons

      Not very detailed in terms of production and development.

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      ReviewsBuro Happold reviews

      Glassdoor has 828 Buro Happold reviews submitted anonymously by Buro Happold employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Buro Happold is right for you.